On the plane back to Israel now, I take a deep sigh of relief that everything worked out fairly simply today. Before I begin, I should just mention that this blog consists neither of the beginning of my trip in South Africa nor Israel (I'll get back to those in later blogs when those trips have concluded too).

At 5:40 in the morning on January 27th, I departed from Tel Aviv for Athens. It had been since September of last year that I hadn't seen my sister. Kesha and I couldn't have been more excited. Back in September, Kesha began her own journey in Dublin studying abroad. One semester and a cross-continent journey later led Kesha first to her boyfriend Kevin in Italy, then both of them to their final destination, Greece. Knowing that I would be in Israel at that time, I seized the opportunity to make the short journey over to see them.

Recently, a friend told me about a website called airbnb.com, which allows users to stay in extra rooms/guesthouses of people around the world. We decided to give it a try and it could not have been a more pleasant experience. Our host, Eleni, was absolutely incredible. Before Kesha and Kevin arrived, she showed me her place, prepared breakfast for me (including freshly squeezed orange juice), gave me a city map with places to visit in Athens, and really made me feel welcome in her home. As the night before had been quite exhausting (stay tuned), I napped until Kesha and Kevin arrived. Eventually they did arrive, and we were off to go eat! On Eleni's recommendation, we went for incredible chicken gyros a short distance from her apartment. We took our first day very easy, watched a movie, ate snacks, and went to bed.

The next day, ambitious as ever, the three of us got an early start. We walked the short distance into the heart of Athens, walked in and out of shops, went into Karameikos Park, climbed to the Acropolis, saw impressive amphitheatres, visited the incredibly impressive marble Olympic stadium, and intentionally got a little bit lost in the quaint streets of the center. Eventually, we called it a day, because the sun had begun to set, and we headed home. As Kesha napped, Kevin and I attempted to make an executive decision (to no avail) as to whether we would go to an island, go further North on the mainland! We needed to make any sort of decision. With the advice of Eleni and her two friends visiting from Crete, we eventually settled on something that made everybody happy; we decided to go to the island of Hydra (where it turns out my dad had been many moons ago).

After a struggle to determine ferry times (the online systems were ridiculous), we eventually sorted it out and headed down to Piraeus (the port) for the 1 o'clock ferry. When we arrived there to purchase our tickets, we learned that the 1 o'clock ferry was cancelled due to the weather (omen number one), but the 5:30 was still scheduled to leave. After killing 4 hours around the port, we were off. The 1.5 hour trip there was extremely choppy and so by the time we arrived, we all felt a bit nauseated (omen number two).

If you map Hydra Town on a map, you see that it really isn't all that large. All the hotels and guest houses claim that they're a 3 minute walk to them, and it was. Kevin and I chose this guest house called the Piteoussa Guest House because it was one of the only, if not the only place that offered a triple room, and at a good price. The guest house owner, Yiannis, was so kind, and made us feel very welcome in our beautiful room, mapped out restaurants that offered discounts to people that stayed with him, and really made sure we were comfortable. Feeling a bit less nauseated, we ventured out for dinner.

To me, it was freezing cold and ridiculously windy. Apparently in comparison to Dublin however, Kesha believed it might as well have been a summer day. We had an incredibly delicious and leisurely dinner at Isolas (I had a penne pasta, sun-dried tomato, and chicken dish that really blew my mind it was so delicious). Eventually we wrapped up, headed back and called it a night.

The next morning, a little concerned about what had happened with the boat we were meant to take the previous day, I decided it might not be a terrible idea to check to make sure my departure was meant to actually depart (Kesha and Kevin were unconcerned at this point because they had until the first departure 2 days later to make it back with no problems). According to the internet, my journey was no longer meant to. We went down to the port to the ferry ticket agency, where we found a sign that read all departures for January 30th were cancelled. Meanwhile, it was noon, and I was flying out of Athens at 10:30 that night.... The lady directed us to the port police to find out what my options would be, because they were the ones who made these decisions. The port police informed us that not only were that days departures cancelled, the next day, and potentially Wednesdays would be too. This now put pressure on all 3 of us to get the H-E-double-hockey-sticks out of there. The port police, after helping me call my airline to find out what happens if I were to miss my flight, generously assisted us to determine how else we could get back, and of all the potential options, but only one remained for that day. We needed to take a 15 minute water taxi to the mainland and take a 3-hour taxi back to Athens, for approximately 270 euros. So, we scurried back to our hotel, called Yiannis to let him know we were leaving, and packed. Not only did he call a taxi to have it waiting for us at the other side, he got us a discount of 70 euros and came down to the port to make sure we were on the boat when it was time for it to leave. He was so cool.

In the 2 hours we had left, we gave ourselves a self guided tour of the island, encountering donkeys, dogs, and cats mostly. It was really quite beautiful, the sun had finally come out, the water was so unbelievably blue, yet it was still freezing cold. We went into a cafe on the port to have something to drink and waited for our departure. Fifteen gruesome minutes later, we all felt way nauseated, but at least we had made it to the mainland. With 3 hours still left, our Greek taxi driver, whose name I also think was Yiannis and didn't speak any English other than "thank you", "taxi", and "stop" THANKFULLY drove us smoothly and slowly through the mountains that we only needed to stop for one breather.

On a side note, a friend of mine from Argentina, Jemma once told me a pun about a cemetery, and how people are "dying to get in there" that I thought was hilarious. But, like has happened to all of us who have used someone else's joke or the word "retard" for example, I made a little faux pas. After we passed by a beautiful cemetery, I leaned to Kesha and told her that people were dying to get in there, and it could not have been more than 3 minutes that we had to pull over to the side of the road for a funeral precession to drive by. Needless to say, I felt like a complete a******. Thanks Jemma, thanks a lot.

Anyway, Yiannis number 2 took us back to the port so we could be refunded the return tickets we had purchased from the Island, then we headed back to Eleni so I could collect my belongings. She greeted us with smiles and hellos but informed me that my flight might be CANCELED due to weather. FAN-FREAKING-TASTIC. We called the airline and everything was thankfully alright but I would have slaughtered someone had we gone through all that for no reason. So, a boat, taxi, train, and plane later, I've made it back to Israel and the adventure continues.

From beginning to end, I had an incredible time with Kesha and Kevin, and in Greece in general. We laughed the whole time, we didn't disagree about anything of importance, the people of Greece were so nice and helpful to us, and things worked out just fine in the end. As we all know, sometimes in traveling we make expensive mistakes. I am just thankful that this mistake was divisible by three.

I hope you enjoyed this week's adventure! I enjoyed sharing it with you so leave me a comment so I know that you did too.

Τα λέμε! (See you later!)